Tag: relationships

All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Broke Nose by L’Erin Ogle

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“Tell me where it hurts,” he says.

Are you fucking kidding me?  There isn’t enough time for that.  But I know he’s not asking about that.  My eyes are black from the corners to across the bridge of my nose, swollen across the bridge.  My nose feels like hamburger meat rotting on a kitchen counter that we forgot to put away because Kenny actually showed up on time with the dope for once.  That meat sweated and swelled and stank for a week before we finally came down and realized there was a dead animal rotting next to the empty cans of beer and overflowing ashtrays and stacks of dollar bills from a great weekend at the club.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Dreampurple Light by Leila Allison

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Whatever happened to the power-chord?
To which my boyfriend lit a bowl

Was A Stairway to Heaven really the greatest song?
Think it over as you pass that on

Said he’d love me till the end of time;
Forever came to stay in 1989

Still, he was never all so great;
For me that bell had tolled in ‘88

Thirty years go by in the glaze of an eye;
Can it be it’s always the promising future that lies?
 

*******

When my sister Tess and I were girls we’d often visit our father’s grave in New Town Cemetery. Although he had died suddenly when I was two and Tess an infant (thus destined to be little more to us than a face in the family photo album and a grave in the cemetery), we’d make time for “Dear Father” because we had agreed that it was the sort of thing daughters should do. I would recite a psalm memorized from Granna Ivy’s Bible, and Tess would lay a hastily clapped-together bouquet of daisies, buttercups and bluebells on his headstone. I recall admonishing her for the frequent inclusion of dandelions to the arrangement, “Those are weeds, numbskull.” Tess would defend the addition of dandelions on the grounds that “Nobody grows daisies, buttercups or bluebells on purpose, either, bonehead.”

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

No Past, No Future, Just Now by Michelle Ann King

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Front door shut and locked. Push it again, jiggle the handle a few more times, to be sure. I left it open once — maybe more than once?—and next-door’s cat got in the house. Henry wasn’t pleased with me. He’s been so good, so patient, but he was very upset about the door. I’ve been much more careful since.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Humour, Romance, Short Fiction, Writing

If… by Hugh Cron – Warning Strong Adult Content

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“Mum, mum, I’m just going to come right out with it…I’m straight.”

“My God!”

Janice crossed herself and burst into tears.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Dead People on Facebook by Roger Ley

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“Seven o’clock, Martin, time to get up,” said Siri from the bedside table.

“Alarm off,” he said.

“Today is Estella’s birthday, would you like to send her a greeting?” asked the cheery voice.

“I’d love to send her a greeting but she died a week ago so it seems a little pointless.”

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Writing

Supply And Demand by Hugh Cron – Strong Adult Content

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“Just keep following this road Donna, it’ll be about another ten minutes.”

Claire stared at her. She could see worry, apprehension and fear. Her younger sister had the same look when she had first told her what she did.

Claire’s thoughts went back to where this had began.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Family Traditions by L’Erin Ogle

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“I have a headache,” I told Clark, and came upstairs.

It was nine o clock and the kids were asleep, and I didn’t have a headache.  But I didn’t want to sit downstairs and watch Clark get drunk on screwdrivers while watching old Seinfeld episodes, and then have to come upstairs and try to have sex while his penis stands at half mast no matter what I do.
It isn’t me.  I have no doubts about that.  It’s the booze.  We aren’t as young as we used to be and after the kids are out, Clark can’t put the glass in his hand down.  I guess I don’t care much anyway, anymore.  I just don’t want to spend twenty minutes flogging and sucking a soft penis then trying to stuff it in while it wilts and bends.  Then the excuses and the pity party. Having to make him feel good about himself while my vagina crawls up into my uterus.  Might as well skip the whole shebang, and head upstairs with a book, and escape.

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All Stories, Humour

The Time My Dad Chewed Out a Cop by James Hanna

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Dad and I are shooting brown rats at the Putnam County Dump. I’ve got me a .22 Long Rifle while Dad has a Winchester 70 with a scope. We keep a tally of the rats we shoot ’cause that makes it a bonding experience. So far, I’ve plastered six of them while Dad’s shot seventeen. We’re shooting good ’cause there’s a harvest moon out and we can see them like it was daylight. And Dad’s been swigging Johnny Walker to keep his hands from shaking. A couple belts of Johnny Walker turns Dad into Daniel Boone.

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All Stories, General Fiction

My Third Divorce by Terry Tierney

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My first divorce is a hippie divorce. We have few worldly possessions other than our record collection and our philosophy. We remember who bought each of the records, but the philosophy has no origin we can identify. We don’t fight over the wire spool, our major piece of furniture, or our Sears portable stereo. Since we never got around to having children, there is no custody fight, except for the dog, a black and white beagle mix my wife rescued from the pound. When he brings home the blackened carcasses of chickens and other animals, she says they are gifts for me. She claims he loves me best. You take him, she says. No, you take him. We agree on a visitation schedule carefully planned with intervals for cleaning and disinfectants. I consider running away when it is my turn, but he runs away before I can. I know he survives to terrorize another neighborhood and sire a pack of vicious little dogs. One day I expect the pack to come for me.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Writing

Sharing by Hugh Cron – Strong Adult Content.

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The communal bathroom was a lot cleaner than she thought it would be. This was the first time that she’d been in. She reckoned dust would be more of a problem than shit as everyone must have used their en-suites.

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